As is known, the majority of current electronic devices are formed in silicon chips by virtue of the excellent characteristics of this semiconductor material. However, one of the limitations of silicon resides in its lack of flexibility, which prevents use thereof in some applications. For example, silicon is far from suited for application on fabrics or other substrates that, owing to or during their use, may undergo folding. On the other hand, the alternative materials currently under study, such as conductor or semiconductor polymeric materials, have electrical characteristics that are incomparably worse than those of silicon so that they currently do not represent a feasible alternative.
It is thus desirable to provide embodiments that enable implementation of circuits or networks of electronic devices of a flexible type. However, the coupling of electronic devices of a conventional type with flexible supports, for example, a fabric or a plastic support, is problematic.
In fact, currently, the couplings between electronic devices require electrical conductive paths, which, however, entail limitations in the type and degree of flexibility. For example, ribbon couplers of plastic material available on the market may be folded, but the maximum radius of curvature typically must be much greater than the thickness of the coupler, for example, ten times greater. Another limitation resides in the number of bending or folding events that the supports may undergo. For example, some prior couplers allow only a single folding operation, for example during assembly, and cannot modify their spatial arrangement subsequently.
Thus, it is desirable to provide embodiments where the support may undergo events of folding, bending, pulling, twisting, or other types of stress, without undergoing damage, breaking, or creating points and lines of interruption such as to jeopardize the electrical continuity and thus render the entire network unusable.